Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [153]
The very earth, rich and red, contained magical healing properties. “The Christians who go there on pilgrimage take of the earth of the place where the holy body of Saint Thomas was killed and reverently carry that earth into their country and give a little of this earth, mixed with water or other liquid, to the sick to drink when he might have quartan fever or tertian fever”—that is, malaria—“and as soon as the sick man drinks it he is healed by the power of God and of the saint.”
Marco declares that he himself “carried some of this earth to Venice with him and healed many with it.” Marco the merchant did not assume the mantle of healer naturally. While it is entirely possible that he returned to Venice with a sample of the magical soil, there are no reports of his employing it to cure others, nor was it listed among his effects. More likely, his amanuensis Rustichello or a pious translator of the manuscript added this flourish to portray Marco as a man of faith.
HE WAS, IN FACT, BECOMING more spiritually inclined. No longer did Marco Polo dismiss the hundreds, and then thousands, of images of Buddha he encountered—wooden statues, stone carvings, illustrations—as idols. Now he plunged into the history of this singular figure in an attempt to fathom the Buddha’s mysterious appeal.
The first stirrings of Buddhist sympathies in Marco may have come from his contact with the Mongols, who were succumbing to Buddhism in ever-increasing numbers. They had originally encountered it from their neighbors to the west, the Uighurs, but the Uighurs’ version of Buddhism issued not from India but from Tibet. Steeped in magic rituals, this form spread east along the Silk Road to Cambulac and reached Kublai Khan, who endorsed it, as he did the other major belief systems in his empire. In India, Marco encountered a more ancient form of Buddhism, and he found it intoxicating. Ever the chameleon, he altered his persona once more: Marco the Mongol became Marco the Buddhist.
MARCO SET HIMSELF the task of educating his Western audience about the Buddha’s significance. The traveler’s portrayal of his encounter with Buddha conveyed a suggestion of destiny, as if Marco had come all this distance to meet the great teacher who would bestow a sense of purpose and clarity upon his wayfaring. The Buddha’s coming of age resembled Marco’s, and the Venetian merchant naturally identified with the spiritual journey of the Indian sage. Marco offered an account of the Buddha’s life that was drastically simplified, yet heartfelt rather than dismissive or condescending. He provided his earliest audiences with their first exposure to the Buddha and the Buddhist mystique.
Marco called the Buddha by an unusual name: Sagamoni Burcan, “the Divine Buddha.” The first part is his transcription of S’akyamouni, a Sanscrit term meaning “the religious saint of the royal family of S’akya.” The second part comes from a Mongol term, burkhan, meaning “god,” “divine being,” or “saint.”
“This Sagamoni was the first man to whose name idols were made,” Marco explains, proceeding to describe him as “the most holy and best man who ever was among them.”
Marco continues: “He was the son of a great king, both rich and powerful. And this his son was of so good life that he did not wish to hear any worldly thing, nor did he wish to be king. And when his father saw his son did not wish to be king…he was [in] very great vexation at it. He offered him a very great offering, for he told him that he would crown him king of the kingdom and he should be lord of it at his pleasure.
“His son indeed said that he wanted nothing. And when his father saw that he did not wish to rule in any way in the world, he had so great vexation in it that he nearly died of grief. It was no